A Political Statement

I don’t often use my blog for political purposes. It exists mostly as a way for me to share my knitting (and spinning) with other knitters (and spinners), but I do sometimes blog about kitties, football, hockey, the weather, and other stuff that strikes my fancy. Today I feel a need to express my “morning after” feelings about the results of yesterday’s election.

I’m such a happy camper. President Obama was re-elected, winning both the electoral vote and the popular vote, winning Virginia again, and Florida, and Ohio, which he won in large part because he saved the American auto industry that Mitt Romney said should be allowed to go under. The Democrats picked up some Senate seats, quite a few liberal/progressive candidates were elected or re-elected to Congress, including Sherrod Brown (OH), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Alan Grayson (FL), and quite a few women were elected/re-elected to the Senate, too.

The crazy “rape” candidates lost races that they had sewn up until they started making outrageously nutty statements about how women don’t get pregnant from “legitimate” rape, or how rape and any resulting pregnancy is god’s will. (So I suppose the victim should just suck it up and take it since it’s what god wants.) I hope that the old white male Republicans have learned that there is a price to be paid for making ignorant statements about rape and for supporting the cruel notion that a girl or woman should be forced against her will to give birth to her rapist’s baby.

I’m happy to report that Pennsylvania elected its first ever Democratic Attorney General, and she’s a woman! And speaking of women, the first openly gay candidate for the Senate, Tammy Baldwin, was elected by the voters of Wisconsin. Yay, Wisconsin! And speaking of gays, several states passed measures that support marriage equality, including Maryland and Maine.

And a couple of states even passed measures to legalize the recreational use of cannabis. This is rather quixotic since cannabis is still classified by the federal government as a schedule 1 drug, but it shows that attitudes are changing and maybe we as a nation are beginning to understand that the so-called war on drugs is, at best, misguided.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the voter suppression efforts of the right-wingers failed abysmally. All in all, yesterday was a good day. 😀